Be kind to yourself. Stop telling yourself that whatever you are struggling with “should” be easy. If something is hard for you, it is hard for you. There are probably reasons, though those may just be how you are wired. Acknowledge these things. When you finish something hard, be proud! Celebrate a little.

And really, just stop saying “should” to yourself about your thoughts and feelings in any context. You feel how you feel. The things in your head are the things in your head. You can’t change either directly through sheer force of will. You can only change what you do. Stop beating yourself up for who and what you are right now–it isn’t productive. Focus on moving forward.

On the outside I may appear like an emotionless sarcastic piece of shit but just like an onion when you peel off more layers you find the exact same thing every single time and you start crying

Who am I? There’s a sign out the front that says Lou’s tavern. Im fucking Lou. Who the fuck are you?

I want a Tuesday kind of love. … A Tuesday kind of love that isn’t indulgent, one that doesn’t stop the earth from spinning but maybe keeps us grounded in spite of all that uncontrollable movement. I want to split the bill and pay the bills and not get lost in some unsustainable delusion where the rest of our lives become inconsequential. I want us to be human, I want to argue, I want to take too long in the shower. I want to hear about the horrific lines at the DMV, about a boss who doesn’t get it, about plans to pick up the laundry after work. I want stories of strangers on the bus, of a child who looked lost but turned out not to be, of chance encounters with high school classmates because these seemingly colorless instances are meaningful when filtered through the eyes of someone I care about. A Tuesday kind of love, breathing relevance into otherwise monotonous moments.
A Tuesday kind of love is this: commuting to work knowing that someone cares about what you’re going to have for lunch; understanding that you do not have to be your dynamic, charming, weekend self this time; this time you can butcher sentences and make bad jokes and trip over thin air and it won’t change anything. A Tuesday kind of love is when weekends and weekdays are one and the same, expanses of time where unpredictable, irreplaceable closeness exists, swells, bursts. Tuesday is directionless conversation about things that happened five hours or five years ago; it’s knowing where he keeps his receipts and when he has a doctor appointment; it’s ordering Chinese food or taking his parents out for dinner because they’re in town or forgetting to eat because you’re full of each other’s words and there’s just no room for anything else. By STEPHANIE GEORGOPULOS

I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because ‘romantic’ doesn’t mean ‘sugary.’ It’s dark and tormented — the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can’t attain.

And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can’t ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older; as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it’s already happened.

Jason once told me that eye contact is the most intimacy two people can have — forget sex — because the optic nerve is technically an extension of the brain, and when two people look into each other’s eyes, it’s brain-to-brain.

The official position of Titus Andronicus is that there are no guilty pleasures. If something as harmless as music can give you pleasure, why would you feel guilty about it? Maybe if you were enjoying the music of Screwdriver or the Mentors or some other such ethically dubious band, then you could feel guilty. But if you mean just music besides indie rock or music on the radio, then the notion of a guilty pleasure only serves to further the culture of invalidation that has limited our oppression since the dawn of humankind. In our van, there is no cognitive dissonance when Taylor Swift follows F—-ed Up on the stereo, or when Xiu Xiu follows Barenaked Ladies. As Larry David said in the Woody Allen film, “Whatever works.” Good advice for music, as well as life.

I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can’t tell fast enough, the ears that aren’t big enough, the eyes that can’t take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.

once you go selective entry, you don’t go back.

Find me now. Before someone else does.

That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth.
You can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out.
And it’s not the best thing I’ve ever written, I’m still working on my rhythm.
My tongue gets tied sometimes, my throat gets dry, my hands start trembling.
Honestly, the only thing I’ve mastered is how to write a really good ending.
But I’m getting pretty tired of finish lines.
So this morning I bought a needle and thread, and started stitching you a sunrise.
And the seams are tattered and torn cos I got the cloth from from an old shirt
I was wearing the first time this world started tearing me open.
And I’ve been choking for my breath since then.
Have you ever spent a whole year hoping the morning wouldn’t come?
I’ve had a band-aid in one hand, and in the other, a gun.
Something’s been screaming “Fire, kid,” but something’s still screaming “Live”
so baby, write me a bridge away from this storm.
I don’t know the words to the song you were born to sing,
but I know your fingers will bleed when you play the chords
and maybe you’ll need me then like I need you now.
When I say that I miss you, I mean something more.
I mean I’ve been biding my time til you kiss me again.
I keep poems like secrets, then tell them when I’m tired of hiding who I am.
I am missing you most in the silence between songs on my favourite records.
Sometimes it takes so long for the music to start.
Is there a shoreline where the seaweed holds the rocks so tight they soften into sand?
Is it too late to say that’s how my heart feels in your hands,
like you could sift it through an hourglass, and pass it off as time?
Never stood still and neither did I. But I will. If you let me.
In your arms, I forget what the yarn knows of sweaters.
I forget how to hold myself together, so if I unfold now, like a love letter,
tell me you’ll write back soon. Tell me you’ll still come untethered.
I saw the moon last night for the first time in months.
She reminded me of you, slouching stubborn in the light.
I’d fight battles against the sun to rest against you tonight, to feel your breath on my pillow.
Those songbirds outside your window are dropping feathers like I dropped words.
I’m cold from all that came out wrong. I sleep alone now, even when I don’t.
I sleep backbone to floorboards cos they’re softer than regret.
Don’t let me go. Don’t let me go yet.
I traced your silhouette on the skyline.
Your crooked spine bent meadows into mountains I climbed to watch the sun set.
The sky never looked so gorgeous. All those fallen stars, sick and tired of being famous.
That man next door with his old violin. I swore his song could save us.

I think it’s great for two people to be together. That is a good number. I think, that to keep it alive though, you can’t spend every day together. It wears out the magic, Love means nothing to me if it’s not fortified with fierce, painful longing, brief explosive instances of furious passion and intimacy and then a sad parting for a time. In that way, you can give your life to it and still have a life of your own.

I think some couples spend too much time together. They flatten out the potential for experience by constant closeness. Passion builds over time like steam. Let it rage until it’s exhausted and then leave it alone to let it build up again. Why can’t love be insane and distorted? How can it be vital if it has the same threshold as normal day-to-day experience? Why can’t you write burning letters and let your nocturnal self smolder with desire for one who is not there? Why not let the days before you see her be excruciating and ferment in your mind so on the day you go to the airport to pick her up, you’re nearly sick with anticipation? And then when desire shows the first sign of contentment, throw it back it its cage and let it slowly build itself back into a state of starved fury. Then when you are together, it all matters. So that when you look into her eyes, you lose your balance, so that when she touches you, it feels like you have never been touched before. When she says your name, you think it was she who named you. When she has gone, you bury your face in the pillow to smell her hair and you lie awake at night remembering your face in her neck, her breathing and the amazing smell of her skin. Your eyes go wet because you want her so bad and miss her so much.

Now that is worth the miles and the time. That matches the inferno of life. Otherwise you poison each other with your presence day after day as you drag each other through the inevitable mundane aspects of your lives. That is the slow death that I see slapped on faces everywhere I go. It’s part of the world’s sadness that’s more empty than cold, poorly lit rooms in cities of the American night.